The vote may be public - but it's also potentially quick. There's an easy political trick that can be used with treaties or laws alike: Speed. Write in secret, negotiate in secret, then rush through the vote as fast as you can. The PATRIOT act, for example, was introduced on October 23 - and passed by the house on the 24th. If the trick is executed properly, any opposition groups just don't have time to rally. By the time they are aware of what's going on, it's already too late.

Also, under the Supremacy Clause, treaties are given a legal weight equal to that of the constitution. It doesn't address what to do in the event of a conflict.

It changes both ways, and that's just the bit we are aware of. Who knows what's going on behind the scenes. Remember ACTA? Negotiated in secret - the public only became aware of it via leaked documents, and this was a legal agreement with potentially more of an effect than an act of congress. Now TRIPS is being negotiated in exactly the same manner. The idea of conspiracies of politicians secretly running the country may sound like the stuff of conspiracy theories, but every now and then it's exactly what happens.

While I can see the temptation, it isn't going to work so well. That war was of states verses states, with access to military hardware on both sides. A revolution in the US today would consist of semi-organised armies of volunteers with rifles verses a government with long-range artillery, bomber aircraft, advanced intelligence-gathering equipment and much more powerful fully-automatic assault rifles. No contest. The best you could hope for would be a long insurgency, fighting dirty and adopting terrorist tactics of hiding in the civilian population and keeping identities secret, French Resistance style - but that's not enough to overthrow a government. The idea of a violent uprising isn't realistic.

A better proposal would be to shift the rules a bit through technology. A sufficient investment in new forms of communication technology could effectively undermine a lot of commercially-based power - it doesn't matter how strict the copyright laws are if they can't be enforced, and if all communications are encrypted and avoid passing through any bottlenecks where control can be exerted then it becomes much harder for government to monitor or control them. Mass-piracy, properly exercised, could cripple the entertainment-media industry. It just has to be made into something which is near-universally accepted by the public, easy enough for anyone to take part with less effort than buying from legitimate channels, and safe from any form of copyright enforcement.

It needs both approaches together. Sometimes research needs the sort of massive funding only commercial interests can provide. Other times there wouldn't be any profit it in (Disease too rare, treatment too cheap) and you need non-profit work from academia, charity or government. Neither is right in all circumstances.

Patents in pharmacuticals work well.

Their application to software has been a disaster. They are granted so readily and for things so obvious, it's now become a common practice for companies to collect as huge a portfolio of crap-patents as possible just so they can win a legal battle by attrition, then cross-license with sufficiently powerful rivals so they can avoid suing each other into oblivion. It's reached the point where it's impossible to write anything more complicated than Hello, World without potentially infringing a patent somewhere.

Patent reform is needed. Raising costs wouldn't work, as it just disadvantages small companies and individuals. Tougher approval processes would go a long way though, and courts should have more power to penalize patent holders if the patent is later found in court to be obvious, trivial or based on prior art which the patent holder should have been aware of.

No need. It's been so heavily mythologised, only historians seem to know what it was actually about. Lots of people have somehow come to believe it was a big protest against whatever they dislike.

This is especially amusing in the case of the Tea Party, who took their name from it and believe it to be a protest against high taxation. Taxes were involved - but the key change in tax law that started it was a tax exemption. The British passed a tax on tea, but granted an exemption to the politically well-connected East India Company. This allowed them to undercut independent (And especially colonial) shipping companies on price and drive them out of business. The tax itself wasn't the issue, it was the obvious manner in which a British company had used their lobbying influence to get laws passed to their own advantage at the expense of rivals without such influence. The protester's cause had more in common with Operation Wall Street than the Tea Party movement.

Bicycle Repair Man.
Just-Us League.

You could trawl the indy comics for ideas, plenty of really obscure publishers who'd sell the rights for fifty bucks and a shot at fame.

Charisma without wisdom is especially dangerous. It leads to people who are consistently wrong, but manage to convince others they are right. That's how you end up with a Jenny McCarthy - someone who can spout easily-disproven falsehoods on a topic upon which they have no qualifications, and still be believed by a large number of people.

Ask any smart person: The stupid people are a lot happier.

I'd ask my sister, the qualified environmental scientist, except she is busy washing her uniform after another day cleaning out the cages at a pet-care company. There is just no work to be had in that field.

My own career dead-ended at Helldesk, but that's largely due to my lack of ambition. The only way up from here is into management, a place I have absolutely no desire to be, and I'm not willing to leave my current hard-obtained job because of convenient transport and a good team of co-workers. Even if it doesn't actually pay enough to live off of.

Yes, but not by much. You let it divide for a while, then pull one cell out to sequence - by that point it's got enough cells that the loss of one makes no difference, it heals perfectly. This is already an established procedure used for parents who have a serious genetic condition and wish to ensure that it isn't passed on. It's only a little more complicated than IVF - and it really is just IVF with one extra step.

BNW achieved an interesting thing: It described a dystopia which actually functioned very well. Minimal crime, no unemployment, high standard of living, a happy population with a high amount of free time for recreation, and a minimum of coercion. Actually seemed like rather a pleasant place to live. It took a contrast with a 'savage' to highlight the oppressive aspects, and even then those were shown to be only oppressive by our own standards - to one raised in the culture, our objections would seem silly. I can certainly envision worse futures.

With current selective pressure, Marching Morons does seem inevitable given enough time. But humans are a very slow species to evolve - twenty year or so reproductive cycle, very large population. Chances are circumstances will change before natural selection can have any major effect.

The US/UK extradition agreement is not symmetrical. The US need only ask nicely and we are supposed to turn over the accused, while the UK would need to provide evidence sufficient for conviction to even ask for someone to be extradited from the US.

Don't be quite so sure. Around the middle ages, fat was attractive. Fat showed a person had plenty of food, a sign of economic success. A bit of fat and some very wide hips on a woman marked them as well-suited to bearing children, which was a prime concern.

If you're fiddling with genes, a good option might be to try to weaken that craving for fat and sugar.